It's official now: 174 for Congress, 114 for NCP

NEW DELHI: With just two days to go for the last date for filing nominations, Congress and NCP announced their much awaited pre-poll pact with Congress set to contest 174 seats and NCP 114.

The deal, which was finalised after a great deal of wrangling on both sides, will be backed by joint campaign and manifesto, with the chiefs of the two parties — Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar— set to address rallies together. The two sides have also reached a decision on the specific seats that each side will fight.

Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) chief Manikrao Thakre, and senior NCP leader and Union minister Praful Patel, who made the announcement in the Capital, made a strong pitch for the third front parties, including RPI which is an ally in the current alliance government in the state, for join the fight against "communal forces".

The announcement now clears the way for the two parties to declare their candidates. Explaining the delay in the announcement of the alliance, Mr Patel said due to delimitation it was necessary for the parties to undertake an extensive review of all seats. Talking of the 10-year-old Congress-NCP alliance, Mr Patel talked of continuing the "good work" done by the alliance government in the future.

"We will be able to give a good government. Last time also we fought together. We will soon announce our programmes and policies we promise to deliver," Mr Patel said.

Extensive meetings were held on Tuesday to put an end to the deadlock between the two sides, especially on seats in Pune and Mumbai. Mr Patel admitted to the problems posed by delimitation talking of big cities where the number of seats had increased due. The dispute was resolved after an evening meeting at Ms Gandhi's 10 Janpath residence.

Mr Thakre and Mr Patel said the parties would individually announce their lists of candidates on Wednesday which would also spell out the seats where the two parties would fight. To a question about whether Congress would give tickets to the kin of senior leaders, Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan said that the decision had not been taken keeping that criteria in mind.

The NCP's tally stands eight seats short of the 2004 tally of 122. Congress' share has this round gone up from 166 seats that it contested in last elections. The seat-sharing talks had been protracted and conducted informally because of the Congress' insistence that the 2009 assembly polls formula should reflect the results of the general elections.

Congress, in a surprise performance, had outdone NCP, winning 17 seats to the other party's seven. NCP fared poorly in its strong-holds of Western Maharashtra and Marathwada even as Congress made in-road in NCP territory and performed exceptionally in Mumbai and parts of Konkan.

With the contest in Maharashtra now taking on a complex character with an 18-party third front as well as MNS in the fray, Congress and NCP alliance was a foregone conclusion. The alliance will help both parties take on the principal Opposition the Shiv-Sena-BJP and help it go to the people citing "good governance". The Congress-NCP alliance government has been in power in the state since 1999.